Suppose you’re back in high school and the final assignment for your English Composition class is a biography you are to write about someone deceased who lived in the last century. Your neighbor’s dad was quite famous, especially overseas, where he had a smash record album that topped the charts back in 1977. You’re a fledgling guitarist, planning on minoring in music in college, so this was an easy choice. You’ve heard a lot about him over the years, mostly in passing at neighborhood barbeques and such.
You don’t know where to begin gathering data about this person, so you do what you normally do – you Google him. You also find a lot about him on trustworthy sources such as Wikipedia. Beyond that, much seems to be hearsay, gossip, and drivel about his past relationships and such. While there’s no shortage of data, you can’t trust all of it. So, you jump on ChatGPT and ask the AI algorithms you interact with to return only data that can be trusted. But even that is suspect because you know from your computer science class that AI can hallucinate (give you confident answers even though they are wildly wrong). How much can you really trust a type of “intelligence” where the preceding qualifier is “artificial”?
At dinner, you express your frustration to your mom and she says, “Why don’t you just walk next door and interview Sarah, his daughter? I’m sure she’d love to share stories about her dad.” Duh! So, you call Sarah and set a day to interview her.
The interview goes amazingly well. In fact, you feel like you have made a new friend. Sarah gives you so much to write about that the ten-page minimum for the biography will not be a problem at all to meet. The experience is truly enlightening since Sarah lived with her dad her entire life. You think to yourself that this was the next best thing to meeting him in person. Part of you wishes you had made the effort when he was alive because he sounds so inspiring.
If you can’t meet a person face to face, who better than the child of that person to describe them to you?
So, you want to know God better, huh?
Who, in the Bible, might you focus on for the greatest perspective possible?
Some might say the Apostle Paul, or maybe John, the so-called “Apostle of Love”. Others may say Abraham or Moses, or maybe even Adam. These are all great candidates, sons adopted into God’s family. But can any of these men even remotely compare to Jesus, God’s only begotten Son (John 3:16)?
If you want to know God better, then turn your attention to the four Gospels, where Jesus, the Son of God, speaks volumes about His Father, our Father in Heaven. Factoid: Did you know that Jesus refers to God as His Father more often than in any other way? What does that say to you? To me it says that above all things, God is our Father. The Bible has a lot to say about fatherhood, especially when it comes to God.
If you want to know God better, consider what it means to be His child.
For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.
– 1 Corinthians 8:5-6
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
– Ephesians 1:3-6
To answer the question directly, “What does it mean to be His child?”, we need look no further than the Son who has been in fellowship with Him for all of eternity, before human history even began!
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God…And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
– John 1:1-2, 14
And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.
– John 17:5
I highly recommend reading John 17 when you can. It’s such an intimate portrait of a Son praying to His Father. Jesus exudes deference and affection for His “Abba” (meaning “Daddy” or “Papa” – Mark 14:36). To Jesus, His Father is a place of joy, peace, and love. These are, after all, the qualities of eternal life in Him. For context and amplification, this is why it was so very painful for Jesus to be separated from His Father on the Cross. Just imagine having a perfect earthly father for a moment (he doesn’t exist, by the way), and someone ripping him away from you. Your heart would break, right? Now imagine the perfect, eternal love between Father and Son being severed. Unfathomable pain.
Fortunately, Jesus paid the price for God’s children so that we would never have to suffer such a fate. Instead, we have the joy of looking forward to eternity with Him, a Person whom Jesus adores with all His heart.
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”
– Galatians 4:6
And this is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
– John 17:3
For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
– 2 Corinthians 4:6
If you want to know God better, focus on the Son who knew Him before human history even began. Do a simple search in the Gospels for the word “Father” and read all the passages that are in red letters. See what the Son of God has to say about His Father, your Father. You don’t need Google or ChatGPT to figure things out; you only need Jesus, your best friend to help you. No one in the Bible has the divine perspective of Jesus, even as incredible as the apostles, Mary, Abraham, etc. were. Go to the source, I say, and listen closely to what He has to say about His Dad. I promise you’ll be blessed by it.
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
– 1 John 3:1a
Love in Christ,
Ed Collins